Saturday, Oct 10
players: Caroline, Andrew, Adrienne, GM Ben

"... can I take your eye?"

See, even when you're the conflict winner, it always pays to be polite. That's just how we roll in Story Games.

Creatively, I thought the minion characters were awesome:

- clever little Mary, mute feral-child, hungry for attention, approval and raw meat

- the (sometimes) kind leper Pavel, horrible to look upon but beautiful to hear (in music too, it turns out)

- evil-eyed Victor, whose vision was clouded except when he looked upon love, but who couldn't see love through his tears

I think we got a little pinched by the mechanical pacing: story-wise we were ready to overthrow the Master, but no one had enough Love to do the job. I think the rules would also better in a slower style with more build-up, rather than a one-shot.

I definitely had a lot of those post-game "d'oh! I totally should have added that in!" moments, like having Josef return to the manor with a torch-wielding mob to find who'd been stealing all the villagers' precious possessions (and his wife). That would have fit perfectly with the climactic dinner scene I think.

Going back to what Caroline was saying about wanting to play games twice (an idea I whole-heartedly agree with), playing when everyone's already familiar with the rules alleviates some of these issues, because you can focus on just the story side, instead of trying to foresee how the rules are interacting with the story.

I definitely agree about the pacing, mechanics-wise, being better suited to a longer multi-session game. But, I was delighted we were able to come to the (fun) resolution we did in the time we had. Caroline and Andrew both had really cool character concepts, and I wish we could have had the opportunity to delve more into their personalities - either through their 'love' interests, or their interactions with the Master. Although I think our play-through was great, I also think it would be fun to play again, maybe with a totally different setup. Perhaps something darker where the Master was a more cruel or blatantly monstrous - the game definitely has the potential to be totally vile (in a good way).

I also think that that is a very hard game to run (facilitate?) - particularly the ways the rules intend. If I were obliged to come up with unique personal scenes on command, while at the same time trying to frame some sort of narrative whole, it would -not- be a fast or fun game. Ben did a fantastic job of at first putting us into emotionally wrenching situations, and then later guiding us into setting up our own. But I think that requires a lot of skill and experience to do as well as he did and it would not be easy for many people to pull off well.

So thanks to Ben for running such an awesome story game for my first real exposure to it, and thanks to Caroline and Andrew for being such fun and innovative co-players. (Andrew's killer accent. Caroline's killer instincts.) I'm looking forward to my next experience!

Yeah, the master came off less scary than I would have guessed beforehand: emotionally abusive, definitely, but not really hardcore evil. Which in hindsight might have been a boon, because we focused more on the terrible things the minions wound up doing to indulge his whims and lusts. He didn't do the really bad stuff, they did, with no greater coercion than him withholding his favor.

For a more overt horror/high-murder game, I think we'd definitely want a much lower Reason and higher Fear. High Reason makes perpetrating nastiness harder. Lower Reason would have also triggered interesting bits like "The Horror Revealed" where a player gets to narrate an outside vignette showing how the fear is corrupting ordinary peoples' lives.

I had a great time, one of my best experiences with Story Games so far. My Life With Master was a comfortable system, a good transistion for long term D&D players who may be stuck in railroaded rut. I'm certain that at least a good portion of the fun came from Ben's excellent directing us through fun and challenging situations. It was great to play with Caroline again and to meet Adrienne, they made for super fellow minions. I agree that another game would really allow us to make the most of the system and take down our master. We could even make him more evil next time as everyone deserves a chance to grow into being worthy of a mob of torch wielding villagers. Character creation was easy, mechanics were nice and simple (despite me having to ask every scene what I needed to roll), in fact the only thing I can think of that might have made it better for me would be to have the minons working together more but I loved that our paths weaved together for the final scene. Thanks to everyone involved for such a positive experience.

Not to sound like a parrot, but I too thought it an excellent game. Mechanically it would have been helpful to have a quick reference as to what to roll in each scenario, as opposed to always needing to ask Ben. Likewise, the system of assigning values to reason and fear was a bit confusing and seemingly arbitrary to me--I'd like to play a game with higher fear/less reason. I'd love to play it again and maybe try out different settings (can anyone say minions in space?) and explore the lack/abundance of the minions' humanity a bit more fully.

Overall, excellent game. Hearing the basic premise of the game made me think it would be a fun and silly game--I'm was happily surprised by the game's darkness and depth.

Thanks to everyone for the excellent game! Sorry I killed so many animals o_o And thanks for the eye Adrienne :)